


Conflict and Resolution

by aparticularbandit



Series: Roisa Fic Week 2020 [7]
Category: Jane the Virgin (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-23
Updated: 2020-09-03
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:47:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 16,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26079718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aparticularbandit/pseuds/aparticularbandit
Summary: In which Luisa decides to move out.Ending of series that started with Let It Snow and continued with Retribution, Complications, Confessions of an Unlovely Nature, and Happy Fun Times.Roisa Fic Week 2020 Day 7: Fireworks.
Relationships: Luisa Alver/Rose Solano, Rose Solano & Mia Alver
Series: Roisa Fic Week 2020 [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1880437
Comments: 6
Kudos: 22
Collections: Roisa Fic Week 2020





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Apologies that this isn't getting posted all at once and is instead being posted in installments. There are a lot of reasons for this and I...don't really want to get into all of them. Sorry!!
> 
> I plan on giving this a rating once it's done, but until it's done, I'm not really sure what it's rating will be. Sorry for that, too. ><
> 
> AND! Thank you to everyone who was involved with Fic Week and who continues to be involved with Fic Week! It's been so great this year!! I'm so encouraged by how many people are still here!

“I’m going to move out at the end of the semester,” Luisa says, unable to look up and meet Rose’s eyes.

The move isn’t entirely out of the blue. Rose hasn’t expected _this_ , but she’s expected Luisa to say something that feels like the shoe dropping for weeks now. Mia moved out of their little house last month without explanation, and when Rose sided with Luisa’s mother over Luisa herself, the other had taken it _personally_.

* * *

_“My mother is unstable!” Luisa hisses at her, her hands clinching into fists. “Just because you’ve seen her get better by leaps and bounds since she’s been living here with us, that doesn’t mean she_ is _better. You don’t know what she’s like living by herself!”_

Neither do you _, Rose wants to say, but she keeps her jaw clinched firmly shut. This isn’t about her. It never has been._

 _Luisa takes a deep breath and whirls away from her, pounding one hand on the kitchen counter. “I don’t want to lose my mom just because_ you _thought she was better enough to live on her own.”_

 _Her scars itch, and she can’t keep her mouth shut. “Your mother is an adult. She has spent the majority of her adult life locked away in a mental institution where they were giving her so many drugs that she couldn’t speak, couldn’t_ think _. It’s perfectly normal for her to want to live on her own—”_

_“My mom tried to jump off a bridge!” Luisa interrupts, whirling back around to face her, grabbing Rose’s collar in her hands._

_“When she was being drugged by the same institute!” Rose presses her lips together, but she doesn’t look away. “What you have done for your mother is_ good _,” she continues, forcing her voice to be calmer, “but you have to trust that she’s going to be okay when she moves out. Were you actually planning on taking care of your mother for the rest of your life?”_

_“I don’t know!” Luisa drops Rose’s shirt and turns away, crossing her arms. She shudders once. “I don’t know.” She raises a hand and sniffs loudly. “I thought I could get someone else to help out. I thought—” Then she shakes her head. “It doesn’t matter what I thought. She’s leaving. I don’t have a choice.” She looks back at Rose, glaring at her. “Why couldn’t you have at least agreed with me?”_

_“Sorry that your lying lawyer didn’t want to lie.”_

* * *

There hadn’t been any way to explain how she felt without pulling up her sleeves and showing Luisa the scars etched into her skin, and she wasn’t going to do that just to force Luisa to see her side on an argument that, in her opinion, didn’t really matter. Whether she agreed with Luisa or not, Mia was going to move out – she _had_ moved out – and as far as she knew, the older woman is still doing just fine on her own.

(Rose hasn’t told Luisa this, but she has visited her mother a couple of times. Mia’s house is even smaller than theirs is: one bedroom, one bathroom, and a tiny kitchen. It’s cute, though. There’s a lot of yellow, a lot of sunshiny colors, a couple of sunflowers bursting out of the ground in the front of the house, a few more flowers in the flower boxes that Rose knows Luisa planted. They’ll all die soon enough; the weather has been growing colder, and the first frost should come by the end of the month.

Every time she has visited, Mia has seemed to be doing just fine. Rose has prodded the older woman, making sure that she knows to let her know if something is wrong. She _understands_ what it feels like when something is wrong. But Mia has assured her _countless_ times that she’s doing just fine.)

* * *

_“You don’t have to keep checking in on me, you know. Someone might think that you care.”_

_Mia has gotten better at speaking. Her voice isn’t as thin or raw or rasping as it once was. She still prefers to sign, and even now, she switches to her hands instead of continuing to speak._ Luisa isn’t sending you, is she?

 _“She doesn’t have to.” Rose takes a deep breath, pressing the petals of one of the flowers between her fingers. “She won’t_ talk _to me anymore. Might as well check on you myself.”_

 _Mia’s eyes widen._ What do you mean she won’t talk to you?

 _“She’s mad at me for being fine with you moving out. She’s mad at_ you _for moving out, but she can’t rightly take that out on you, can she?” Rose rolls her eyes. “She thinks you’re going to be all crazy again.” Her eyes shift away. “She refuses to use that word. She thinks_ unstable _is a better one.”_

I _was_ unstable. I’m not anymore. The best work a therapist like Luisa can do is to help me be good enough to stand on my own again.

 _Rose nods. “I believe that. I think_ she _believes that. But it’s_ you _.” Her lips press together. “If something happens to you, she’d never be able to forgive herself.”_

_It looks like Mia wants to step forward before she does, and she hesitates, her arms out, as though asking without words. Rose gives her a little nod, and Mia takes her face in her hands. “Nothing is going to happen to me,” she says, her voice soft but firm._

_“I wish I could make her believe that.”_

* * *

_Where are you going to stay?_ Rose wants to ask but doesn’t. She simply gives a little nod. “I’ll have to see if I can find someone else to live here, then,” she says instead. “The middle of the semester is _rough_ , but I can’t live here by myself.”

“Why not?” Luisa asks, one brow raising. “I don’t see you as the sort to get lonely, even if this place _would_ be too big for you.”

Rose shakes her head. “Don’t worry about it.” She takes a deep breath and tilts her head over toward the living room. “We’re getting close to Christmas. I’m surprised you haven’t done anything yet.”

Luisa’s eyes narrow. “It’s still November. You don’t decorate for Christmas until _after_ Thanksgiving. You’re really bad at this.”

“I don’t decorate,” Rose says with a shrug. “Why would I be _good_ at this?”

Luisa rolls her eyes. “I’ll be back and decorate next weekend. Don’t worry about it.”

And she doesn’t.

* * *

Thanksgiving is a horror, but at least Luisa feels almost like normal again.

Rose _expects_ Thanksgiving to be worse than it is, so it doesn’t bother her too terribly, but Luisa? She expects far more from it than what she is given. Truth be told, Rose thought Luisa would host her family’s Thanksgiving dinner at their little house, which wouldn’t have had near the room for all of them to fit and would have been _absolutely_ horrible because Rose would have been stuck there with all of their family awkwardness.

Fortunately, Luisa’s dad hosted the entire affair. Rose stayed at their house by herself (except for when she left for some Black Friday shopping – and what even was the point of calling it _Black Friday_ anymore, anyway, when the shopping and sales now half of the time started on Thanksgiving – on _Thursday_ – instead of on Friday). To her favor, Luisa _did_ offer to let Rose join them, but Rose was determined to have no part in that unless she had to.

And since Rose is not involved and doesn’t have to be there, she avoids the main brunt of…well, of _everything_.

It isn’t until she gets back to the house – sometime long after the last sales have ended – and sees Luisa’s purple PT Cruiser parked in their driveway that she begins to feel a little bit _apprehensive_ about the whole thing. Most of the lights inside the house are shut off, but there’s one still on in the living room, which does _not_ bode well.

Rose takes a deep breath, leaves her purchases inside of the car (she can move them in the morning, given that Luisa sleeps in really late; she doesn’t want Luisa to see anything she might want), and goes inside the house, prepared for whatever Luisa might tell her. She barely shuts the door before she can hear the other woman griping at her, but it sounds so much like how she used to talk to her that Rose felt herself comforted by the reaction.

“Where _were_ you?” Luisa whines, turning over on her stomach and lounging halfway across one of the arms of the sofa. They’d discarded Rose’s old sofa when they moved into the new house, replacing it with a much newer one. Luisa had _insisted_ – something along the lines of _My mom is not going to hang out on a shitty threadbare sofa, so I’m getting us a new one, and_ you _have to live with it!_ – and here it is, getting more use than – well, not more than Rose’s sofa had, because she’d slept on that thing, and no one really slept on this one.

Rose let out her deeply held breath. “Were you waiting up for me?” She stumbles into the living room – too much time on her feet in those stores, too much rushing around trying to find the best sales (and Rose normally doesn’t _rush_ ) – and collapses on the other end of the sofa, lips pulling up in a slight smile. “Did you _miss_ me?”

“I wish you had _been_ there.” Luisa groans and slumps back into the sofa, her legs spread out, arms wrapped around one of the pillows, brown hair splayed against the cushions. “It was _horrible_.” One of her hands tightened into a fist, and she pounded the cushion beneath her. “And it was so _awkward_. It was like Dad hadn’t ever talked to Mom before at all! And he didn’t remember _any_ of his signing, so I spent most of my time trying to sign what he was saying—”

Rose squints at her. “Your mom can hear just fine.”

“Oh, she _can_ , yes. Definitely.” Luisa waves one hand in the air. “But it’s just _nice_ to sign with her, too, since she mostly signs back.” She shakes her head, lips pursing. “That was the worst thing, too, because Dad couldn’t understand what Mom was signing, so I was translating for him, too, and Mom talked so much that her voice started to get raspy and raw again – you know she’s gotten better at all of it, she _has_ gotten better at all of it, we both know that – but Rafael couldn’t understand why she couldn’t just talk the entire time – and, look, he didn’t really _know_ her before the accident, I mean, he wasn’t _born_ until afterwards, and he hasn’t been around her trying to talk so he doesn’t know, and it was just….” She slumped down again, drifting down the cushion until she was almost on the floor. “It was _so_ bad, Rose. So bad.” Her stomach grumbled, and she held one hand against it. “And I didn’t even get to eat much because I was spending so much time translating and signing and explaining and everything. And I’m so _tired_ and so _hungry_ and Rose, you should have been there because at least _one of us_ should have been able to eat some of that wonderful food.”

“They didn’t let you eat?” Rose’s hand absentmindedly moves to scratch through Luisa’s hair, her fingers brushing lightly against her scalp. “The best part of Thanksgiving is the food, and they really didn’t let you eat _any_ of it?”

Luisa lets out a soft hum of contentment. “Well. They let me eat _some_.” She opens her eyes and looks up at Rose. “How was _your_ Thanksgiving? Did you get to eat any wonderful food?”

Rose yawns, covering her mouth with the back of one hand. “It was long. And I mostly had leftovers.”

“ _Leftovers?!_ ” Luisa sits up in a shock and glares at Rose. “On _Thanksgiving?_ That’s sacrilege!”

Rose yawns again. “Worse than not decorating for Christmas?”

“ _So much worse!_ ” Luisa’s hands ball into small little fists again. She stares at Rose and takes a deep breath. “Fine, _fine_. I’ll do it for you!” She stands up and storms into the kitchen.

Rose pushes herself up from the couch. “Lu. It’s late. I’m tired. _You’re_ tired. And you’re already upset. _Please_ don’t start cooking right now.”

“ _But you had leftovers. On Thanksgiving!_ ”

“Lu.” Rose places a hand on her shoulder and gives it a tight squeeze. “You can cook for me tomorrow. I can even help you cook. And then we’ll _both_ have wonderful food. And it might be late, and it might not be Thanksgiving, but you shouldn’t wait for one holiday a year to have wonderful food.”

Luisa stops and turns around just long enough to give Rose a blank stare. “You would actually enjoy it _more_ if we had Thanksgiving dinner on a day that wasn’t Thanksgiving, wouldn’t you.”

Rose grins. “I absolutely would.”

At her words, Luisa’s smile becomes smug. “So you’ll eat Thanksgiving dinner and watch Christmas movies with me tomorrow, then, right? And help me decorate? Since you’ve figured out how to get to the roof so easily.”

Rose stares at Luisa, blinking a couple of times. “I don’t know where you heard that. In fact, I don’t think I said _anything_ about helping you decorate for Christmas. I’m pretty sure you were supposed to do that all on your own.”

Luisa’s grin brightens. “But if you don’t like decorating for Christmas _on_ Christmas and you like having Thanksgiving dinner on a day that _isn’t_ Thanksgiving, then you’ll be just fine helping me decorate _now_ before it’s actual Christmas decorating day, right?”

“No,” Rose says without any hesitation. “I will never be happy helping you decorate for Christmas. Ever.” She ruffles Luisa’s hair. “But I’ll be happy to watch.” She leans down as though to give Luisa a kiss on her cheek and then stops herself.

Just because this feels familiar doesn’t mean that it is. Not anymore. Luisa’s moving out at the end of the semester – during Christmas break. “Are you even going to be here for Christmas, since you’re moving?”

Luisa’s face freezes. “I’d forgotten,” she murmurs. Her lips curl together, and she bites her lower one. “I’ll be here for Christmas – at least a little bit. I’ll need to be with family, too, but I’ll be here. And for New Year’s. But I’ll probably move out after that.” She swallows and nods once. “I know that feels abrupt.”

“Do you want to talk about why you’re moving?” Rose asks, her voice soft.

Luisa shakes her head. She looks like she’s deflated, and all at once, that thickness feels like it’s sprung up between them again. “I think I should go to sleep,” she says instead, and she doesn’t look up. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”


	2. Chapter 2

Rose learned early on to never lock her bedroom door. In the early days, this was a good thing. When Luisa came into her room, it wasn’t to wake her up or to cajole her, but because she needed comfort while she dealt more fully with the reality of what had happened to her mom and the great hurdles she was trying to overcome. She’d let Luisa stay with her, kissed her forehead when she woke up earlier than Luisa did, and made sure to leave her fully covered with blankets so that she wouldn’t get too cold. (Where Rose ran hot while she slept, Luisa froze solid, and eventually it was the lack of warmth that would wake her more than any bits of light filtering through the darker curtains.)

Unfortunately, with Mia’s absence, this has a tendency to give leave for Luisa to come in for other, less necessary reasons – like now, when she jumps onto Rose’s bed, waking her far earlier than Rose wanted on one of her precious days off.

“C’mon! The _first_ thing you do on any Christmas decorating day is _find your tree_!”

Rose suppresses a low groan and covers her head with one pillow. “Luisa, I’m trying to sleep.”

“But we have to go _early_.” Luisa tries to pry the pillow from between Rose’s fingers. “If we don’t go early, then someone else is going to get the tree we would.”

“If we get a tree _early_ , then it could _die_.”

“Not if we take care of it. Just like putting roses in a vase.” Luisa bends down on the other side of the pillow and stares at Rose. Then she winces. “Not that I would put _you_ in a vase. That would be _so_ bad.”

Rose’s eyes narrow. “No, Luisa. When I die, _please_ don’t put my corpse in a pretty glass box for showcasing it.” The entire image was _disgusting_ – and, unfortunately, one that would prevent her from going back to sleep. She lets out a sigh and slowly sits up, pushing Luisa off of her. “Fine, fine. I’m awake.” She squints, sniffing the air. “Did you cook?”

“Pancakes,” Luisa says with a grin, her hands on her waist. “The perfect Christmas Decoration Day breakfast.” She leans forward. “ _And_ , while we’re shopping for our tree, you can look at ornaments and see if there’s any you like _and there’s always what’s left from the Black Friday sales_.”

Rose doesn’t want to tell Luisa that she’d already shopped the important sales. She rubs one hand on her eye. “The entire point of those sales is to get there when they _open_ , Lu.”

Luisa shakes her head. “We don’t want the more expensive stuff; we want to look at the _cheaper_ stuff, and if we get there _later_ , then we can scavenge through everything that’s left without having to deal with those _horrible_ lines.” She holds up one finger and wags it at her. “That’s how I get a lot of my movies. All those cheap ones at Walmart.”

Rose groans again. “Luisa, I am _not_ going through all of those bins.”

“No, of _course_ you’re not.” Luisa grins. “ _You’re_ going to pick the _tree_.” Her head tilts to one side. “And pick out some ornaments so that they aren’t all mine. And some twinkling lights. And—”

“What’s the point?” Rose asks, getting out of bed and stretching. “You’re going to move out and take all of it with you. I’m not going to decorate after you leave. Why not just use your ornaments?”

Luisa doesn’t say anything, then, and Rose turns back to her. The other girl seems to have frozen entirely. She lets out a breath and tries to smile again. “This is our house,” she says, finally, “and we should decorate it together.” She nods to herself once. “If you don’t want your decorations after, then you can throw them away or do whatever shitty thing you do with your useless stuff. I don’t care. Today, you are decorating with me.”

Her grin seems fierce, then, her eyes shut so tight that it looks painful.

“Okay.” Rose nods. “But first you’re going to have to leave so I can change. You don’t get a free preview just because you woke me up.”

Luisa pouts. “Not even the robe?”

“ _Not even the robe._ ” Rose crosses her arms. “Besides, you’ve seen me wear that thing a hundred times already. I think you’ll be just fine without seeing me in it now.”

Luisa starts backing out of the room, her arms still crossed, but her pout quickly turns into a grin. “I love that you love it. _Unfortunately_ , you haven’t gotten to see me in _your_ purchase.” She waggles her eyebrows at her. “Although that can always be changed—”

Rose makes a shooing motion. “ _Out of my room_ , if you want us to leave any time soon. _Out._ ”

And she goes.

* * *

“So _I’m_ going to go look at the movies—”

“ _Luisa, Walmart is not going to have the best trees._ ”

They haven’t been exactly _fighting_ the entire drive here, but it’s been close to it. Luisa’s PT Cruiser isn’t really made for carrying a tree back, not the same way Rose’s truck is. Rose hadn’t wanted to drive – her truck still had her purchases hidden in it from her shopping on Thanksgiving, purchases she still didn’t want Luisa to see, and she’d used the few seconds she knew it would take Luisa to get clean (she had _demanded_ this, insisting on it despite Luisa’s complaints, just to get her packages out and hidden in her room instead, and Luisa had spent a great deal of time complaining about that) – and no matter how many times she’d tried to turn the music on to drown out Luisa’s complaining, Luisa had shut the music back off, trying to talk about the best way to set up their shopping.

“But they’re going to _have_ trees, and how are _we_ going to know that we don’t like their trees if we don’t go and at least _look_ at them?”

Rose’s hand tightened on the steering wheel. “What is this _we_? I thought you wanted _me_ to pick out the tree.”

Luisa shrugs. “You’re going to have to run it by me, too. I mean, I’ll probably agree with whatever you pick, but _obviously_ if you don’t pick one big enough, I’m going to have to veto it.”

“Why don’t you just come with me and pick out the tree that you like best? That’ll be _a lot_ easier.”

“That’s as bad as having me pick out my own lingerie.” Luisa shakes her head. “I’m definitely great at that, but it’s no fun if you’re supposed to be buying it for me.” She grins. “And you picked out some pretty great—”

“ _Yes, yes, you’ve said that already today._ ” Rose sighs. “But if you come _with_ me, then I can point out the ones I like and we can _discuss_ them, instead of you just…leaving everything on my shoulders. I’ve bought lingerie before, but I don’t have strong opinions on trees. You have to start me from the ground up.”

“But—”

“You can look at movies later.” Rose pulls into the parking lot over by the plant area. There are already a lot of trees set up outside – not as much as there will be later in the year, but certainly more than there were even the day before. “I’ll even look with you. Or at something else. Just….” She shuts the car door behind her and ropes one arm through Luisa’s before the other girl can get away. “Come _with_ me.” Her voice softens. “ _Please._ ”

Luisa lets out a slight _oomph_ as Rose pulls her next to her, and she looks up at her, head tilting to one side. Her lips spread into a smug smirk. “Well, since you asked me _so nicely_ , I guess I can train you in the ways of picking out a good tree.”

 _That is not what I asked_ , Rose thinks, but she knows better than to say it. If she has to look at all these Christmas decorations, best to make Luisa stay with her. Then maybe she’ll have to do less and won’t have to be as focused.

Not likely, but _maybe_.

* * *

They start with the trees. They walk through the trees. They look through the trees. Rose thinks they’ve actually finally _decided_ on a tree – and then Luisa pulls her away from the trees and into Walmart proper, drags her through the store so that they can look at sales (Rose already looked at their sales, she is not _interested_ in any of their sales, she does not want to _be_ here any longer than she _has_ to be), forces her to the Christmas section so that they can look at ornaments.

“Are there any you like?” Luisa asks while staring at one shaped like a donut covered with pink frosting and sprinkles.

Rose stares at them. “Not for any of those prices.”

“Forget about the prices.”

“No,” Rose says, crossing her arms. “They’re all half-off once Christmas is over, which means they’re not worth buying now.”

Luisa sighs and turns to stare at her, placing the donut ornament in her hand basket. “I thought that way, too, once. There was this gorgeous Muppets ornament at Hallmark, and I thought if I just waited until after Christmas I would be able to swoop it up really quick but by the time I got there, it was already gone.” She frowns and stares off into the distance. “It was the _best_ ornament, too. Kermit with his banjo sitting on a log and it had a button that you could press and it lit up and played _Rainbow Connection_ , which is honestly one of the best songs.” She turns to Rose with a frown. “Not that you’d know. You’ve probably never even seen it.”

“I know who the Muppets are, and I know the song.” Rose’s eyes narrow as she turns to Luisa. Then she smiles. “Why don’t you show me the movie, since it means that much to you? We could watch it when we get back.”

Luisa’s eyes light up and then just as quickly that light is _gone_ , replaced with a little glare. “You just want to get out of watching a Christmas movie with me.”

“ _No_ —”

“We’ll just have to make it a double feature,” Luisa continues, not letting Rose finish her sentence. “ _Muppet Movie_ **and** _Muppet Christmas Carol_.” She frowns. “I can’t believe I didn’t show you that one last year.”

“You must not have had _time_ last year.”

Rose knows that the answer is not that simple. Luisa _had_ shown her _Muppet Christmas Carol_ last year. She just barely remembered any of it. It wasn’t like she’d actually _enjoyed_ it. People dragged that sort of story out every year – about Scrooge who needed to learn to pay his workers better instead of letting his greed devour him – and, sure, it’s kind of a heartwarming tale, but no one ever really takes it to heart. Not in capitalistic America. It all just makes her a little bit bitter.

She lets her gaze return to the ornaments. Some of them _are_ cute. Without thinking about it, she reaches out, her fingers playing with one of the little white roses. It’s fake – of course it’s a fake, all floral ornaments are fake when they’re being sold in stores – but the fabric they used to make the petals still feels nice. Soft, like a rose’s petals _should_ feel. And if she leans close enough, she’s certain she can almost smell a little bit of rose wafting off of it.

“You like that one?” Luisa asks, sidling up to her. “We can get it. It’s not that expensive.”

“It’s a waste of money.”

“So let me waste some money on you.” Luisa takes the ornament and places it in her basket with the pink sprinkled donut. “Think of it as an early Christmas present.”

“I don’t want you to _buy_ me Christmas presents.”

Luisa sticks her tongue out at her. “Quit being such a Scrooge.”

“I don’t have enough money to be a Scrooge.”

“Then quit being a bitter Cratchit.”

“Says Fred.” Rose tilts her head to one side. “Or Donald. Do you want to be Fred or Donald?”

“Neither.” Luisa smiles, softer this time. “I’m obviously the Belle to your Scrooge. Didn’t you know that?”

“So you’ll leave me, then?” Rose asks, staring at her. “You’ll realize that I can never love you, and then you’ll leave me?” Her fingers tap the back of her hand. “Is that why you’re moving out?”

Luisa stares at her, her lips pressing together. She looks away, further down the aisle of ornaments, and seems to fall in on herself. “I think I’ve got enough ornaments,” she murmurs, and she looks back to Rose with a forced smile. “I’m going to go look at the movies. If you find anything else you like, put it in here, and I’ll get it for you, okay?” She shoves the hand basket to Rose and then walks off before Rose can say anything else.

Not that Rose has anything else to say. She looks at the hand basket, at the rose ornament on top, and she picks it back up, staring at it a few minutes. _She’ll be upset if I put this back_ , she thinks, so she puts it back in the hand basket. After a few minutes, she takes a second rose ornament – this one a pale white as opposed to the first one’s blood red – and puts it in the hand basket, too.

She only finds one other ornament she likes, one that she holds in her right hand, testing the weight of it, the shape of it. This one she doesn’t put in the basket and instead carries with her separately, hiding it with a couple of movies she could care less about as she goes to find Luisa.

“We should get our tree,” Rose says by way of introduction, brushing her fingers on Luisa’s shoulder, “before someone else gets it from us.”

Luisa’s head snaps up, her hands full of movies that she puts in her hand basket. She grins. “You said _our_ tree.”

Rose’s eyes shift. “It _is_ our tree. You made me help pick it out.”

“Yeah, but you’re getting _involved_.” Luisa punches Rose’s shoulder. “It’s nice.”

“It’s a waste of money.”

“ _It’s nice._ ” Luisa’s grin is so bright for a few moments, then it seems to freeze, then it slowly fades. She hesitantly reaches out, flinches, and then takes Rose’s hand in her own, giving it a gentle squeeze. “Let’s go get our tree.”

* * *

Rose manages to keep her purchases separate from Luisa’s when they check out, and she keeps her bag with her when she drives them – _very carefully_ – back to their house. She expects Luisa to be excited, to want to steal the bag and dig through it to find out what movies she’s decided to purchase, but on the ride back, the other woman is unnaturally quiet, holding her own bag close to herself, her fingers still.

If Rose got worried, it would worry her.

She merely notes it as she lets Christmas music fill the car from one of the now countless stations that have switched to all Christmas music 24/7.

* * *

The tree doesn’t go up easily. It never does, and it never will – not until Rose gets more accustomed to putting one up and sticking it in the stand that they _also_ had to buy (another frivolous purchase that Luisa covered with a depth of money that Rose hadn’t realized she had). It isn’t until Luisa suggests that they might need a _big strong man_ to help them that Rose is able to lift the tree and hold it up long enough for her to get the stand situated. The worst of it is knowing just how sore she will be the following day, how sore she knows she will _still_ be when she goes back to work at the beginning of the week. It is all too easy to collapse onto the sofa, to complain and think about how maybe they should wait until _tomorrow_ to put the ornaments up, and then to quickly revise that sentiment because she does _not_ want to carry over Christmas decorations to the following day. _This_ day was bad enough.

When all is said and done, however, Rose is able to fall into the sofa – grateful that it is as soft and firm as her old sofa had never been able to be – with a plate of pumpkin pie sitting on the coffee table next to her mug and another plate not quite filled to the brim with turkey, cheesy potatoes, and some sort of vegetarian dish that Luisa _said_ was just as good as turkey and Rose is absolutely certain would not remotely compare. (She is wrong.)

“ _Muppet Movie_ first?” Luisa asks, sitting cross-legged in front of the television with both covers in her hands. “For the double feature?”

Rose doesn’t suppress the groan that escapes through her lips. It’s still sunlight outside but just barely; the sky is growing slowly deeper blue and rose with streaks of lavender. “I don’t think I can make it through two movies, Lu. Just stick in the Christmas one. We can do the other one tomorrow.”

“And avoid _tomorrow’s_ Christmas movie?” Luisa frowns, tilting her head back so that she can stare at Rose. “Why don’t we just move the double feature to tomorrow?”

“Counter-argument.” Rose takes a deep breath, and her head aches with thinking while she’s this exhausted. “If today is both our Thanksgiving and our Christmas decorating day, why don’t we _just_ watch the first one? Then we can double up on Christmas tomorrow.” She hates herself as soon as she makes the suggestion – two Christmas movies in one day would be worse than just moving the double feature – but the way Luisa’s eyes light up makes her smile. “Looks like that’s the answer.”

Luisa grins as she puts the first movie into the dvd player. “Why don’t we _triple feature_ tomorrow? We have the full day, and we can make it through all of the _Santa Clause_ movies.” She returns and curls up next to Rose. “The second one is my favorite.”

Rose brushes her hand through Luisa’s hair briefly before scooting just enough away that she can begin to eat. “You want me to sit through _three_ of them? I’m not sure they can hold my attention that long.”

“You made me sit through all of the _Die Hard_ movies in one go,” Luisa says as she plucks a piece of the stuffing off of Rose’s plate and sucks on her fingers. “ _And there’s more than three of those._ ”

Rose’s head tilts to one side. “The first one of those is a Christmas movie. Can that go on your list?”

Luisa glares at her. “It’s not a Christmas movie, so absolutely not.”

“Or it can be the second half of our double feature tomorrow.”

“ _It’s not a Christmas movie, so absolutely not._ ”

“You know,” Rose continues as the commercials begin to play, “I think Hallmark had a _Die Hard_ ornament. Maybe I should order that and put _it_ on the tree.”

Luisa sticks her tongue out at her. “You’re _horrible_.”

“Yes, and you want to spend Christmas with _me_.” Rose nudges Luisa with her elbow. “What does that say about you?”

“It’s called rehabilitation and release.” Luisa crosses her arms and pushes back against the couch. “That’s the entire point of therapy, anyway. You teach someone enough about how to help themselves that they don’t need you anymore.”

This is the moment. It _could_ be the moment. Rose can feel it in her bones. But she knows just as surely that if she tries to move the conversation in that direction now, then all of the good will she’s built up from the rest of the day will be squandered, and they’ll spend the evening arguing instead – and then she’ll still have to sit through a Christmas movie, just with Luisa pouting and upset through the entire thing. It isn’t worth it.

But she files the words away for later as the movie begins to play.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Content Warning: This chapter contains frank discussion of Rose's suicide attempt, as well as a bit of commentary on her misdiagnosis and improper medication. As I said before, in terms of the misdiagnosis, improper medication, and Rose's situation, I do not think this happens very often, if at all, and very much am supportive of both therapy and medication.
> 
> If either of these bother you, please feel free to skip this chapter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warning: This chapter contains frank discussion of Rose's suicide attempt, as well as a bit of commentary on her misdiagnosis and improper medication. As I said before, in terms of the misdiagnosis, improper medication, and Rose's situation, I do not think this happens very often, if at all, and very much am supportive of both therapy and medication.
> 
> If either of these bother you, please feel free to skip this chapter.

Rose waits to say anything until after finals week – the week just afterwards, when Luisa is at her highest, when she’s free of school and has thrown away any worrying about her scores because there’s nothing she can do about it at this point, so what’s the point? (Rose is the exact opposite – not _worrying_ , necessarily, but constantly looking for ways to make her grade higher and higher until the professors stop responding to her entirely. She’s _that_ student. Someone has to be, so why shouldn’t it be her? Not that she’s ever had reason to suspect her grades would be anything other than top-notch. That’s beside the point.)

She taps on the bathroom door a couple of times before opening it. Luisa always leaves the bathroom door open; the knock is just a formality to let her know Rose is coming in.

Normally, Luisa is in the shower, but today she is lounging in the bathtub the way that Rose normally does, the curtain drawn so that Rose can’t see her body (good thing, although she’s been given peek shows for being in the bathroom with her at the wrong time before). There are a couple of candles on the edge of the bathtub, burnt down to the quick, but the scent of them still lingers – a soft vanilla scent that mixes well with the orange ginger of Luisa’s soap. She glances over when Rose stays in the doorway. “Is something wrong?”

“Can we talk?”

Luisa blinks a couple of times. “Sure. Now?” Her eyes widen, and her arms, which had been spread out on either side of the bathtub, move to cover her chest. “ _You just wanted to look at me._ ”

“The curtain is _right there_.” Rose kneads her forehead. “I wanted to talk about why you were moving out.”

“If you want to change my mind, it’s a little late for that.” Luisa looks away from her, closes her eyes, and sinks lower into the water. Her lips form a thin line, as though she’s upset. But as Rose watches, she seems to take a deep breath, as though to steady herself. “I think I would’ve liked you trying to get a peek better.”

Rose groans and turns. “Fine, _fine_ , I’ll wait until later. You can be so _insufferable_ sometimes.” She slams the bathroom door behind her and shakes her head. That wasn’t the way she wanted this to go. That probably just made things _worse_. Great. Just what she needed. For things to be _worse_.

At least she doesn’t have to worry about a Christmas movie today. Luisa’d called it off earlier, saying something about maybe Rose needed a break from her Christmas schooling like she needed a break from her _actual_ schooling. That – and the bath – suggests that something else is wrong, but Rose has no idea what that can be. She’d visited Mia just yesterday, and the older woman seemed to still be doing just fine. In fact, she seemed to be doing even better than she had been when she was living with them. Luisa should be _proud_. Somehow, Rose knows that isn’t the case.

Still.

Rose goes to her bedroom to wait until Luisa gets finished and pulls out the last purchase she’d made when they went shopping. Not yet. Soon, maybe. She hopes. Depending on how this conversation goes.

* * *

Luisa walks to her room wrapped in her towel and with another one wrapped around her hair. She thinks about it for a second and then walks over to Rose’s room, knocks on the door, and says, her voice soft, “I’m out. You can come talk, you know, when you want.”

She doesn’t want to talk. Not really. Not about this. What would she say? _I lived with you for months and we’re still friends and I’d like us to be more than friends and I’m tired of waiting?_ That sounds horrible. It kind of _is_ horrible. And of course she can pin it all on Rose siding with her mom when she moved out, but the truth of the matter is that her mom seems to be doing just fine.

Her stomach clinches at that thought. Her mom had always seemed fine when she was a kid, too, up until she wasn’t. Just because she _seems_ fine doesn’t mean she _is_ fine. She just has to wait. That doesn’t sit well with her either.

Luisa finishes toweling her hair off while she waits in her room for Rose. Then she drops her other towel to her feet—

“ _Fuck_ , Luisa.”

She tilts her head over her shoulder, only to see Rose in the doorway, covering her eyes with one hand. “I would appreciate that,” Luisa murmurs, lips curving into a smile that she knows Rose can’t see. “You don’t have to cover your eyes. I don’t mind.”

“ _I_ mind.” Rose waves one hand at her, the other still covering her eyes. “Put some _clothes_ on.”

Luisa’s smile grows into a broad grin. “Do you want to see the lingerie you got me? I’ve got it right here—”

“ _Real clothes, please._ ”

“Oh, you’re no fun.” Luisa pouts. She finds her pajamas – the same ones she’d been wearing the first time they met, what is almost a year ago now – the maroon sweatshirt with the jackalope on it (from Rafael’s last high school, because she’d wanted to go to his basketball games, but the air conditioning had been _so cold_ in that gymnasium) and an old, ratty pair of sweatpants that were slowly but surely falling apart – and sighs as she finishes pulling the pants on. “You’re fine. I’m _decent_.” She sticks her tongue out. “As decent as I’m going to be.”

Rose walks over to her and curls one of her stray strands of hair around one finger. “I’m not sure you know _how_ to be decent.”

Luisa’s heart catches in her throat. She used to think that wasn’t the way hearts worked, that they could skip a beat and your breath could get stuck in your throat because hearts certainly couldn’t move that much and whatever that is in your throat when you feel like you are about to cry is the same feeling as whatever this is and that’s not your heart – _but she was wrong_ , thinking like that. This doesn’t feel anything like that grief that cuts her throat and bleeds her dry. This, somehow, hurts more. But there are no tears with this, and that’s a wonder.

Hope might be the thing with wings, but hope denied is the bird shot through.

“Wouldn’t _you_ like to know,” Luisa murmurs, and her voice is maybe a little deeper than it is on a normal day, and she maybe feels herself standing a little closer, but she knows better to think that means anything, and when Rose moves away like nothing is any different, she knows that it doesn’t. She wants to reach out as Rose moves to sit on the edge of her bed, but she knows better. She _knows_ better. And it’s this constant ache in her chest that has only grown as the months passed them by, this ache that felt like a stabbing death when Rose agreed that her mom should leave, as though she were being betrayed by her best friend, when Rose doesn’t know, doesn’t think, _can’t_ —

She can’t _live_ like this anymore. She _can’t_.

It hurts too much.

Maybe, if she lived somewhere else, if she was only visiting every now and again, like she had before, when they lived in their separate apartments, it won’t hurt as much. She’ll be able to let go and move on and maybe be with someone else. There’s always someone else. She just knows she can’t here.

But how do you put that into words?

_You don’t._

Luisa curls up on her bed and pulls the blankets up around her and stretches her legs out as far as they’ll go (her legs are the best part of her body, in her opinion, and Rose will never see them because even when she can, she doesn’t really look) and bunches them up underneath her and that isn’t comfortable and she shifts so that she can pull her knees up against her chest and _that_ isn’t comfortable either because it makes her stomach clench even more than it already is and that just makes her feel anxious and she’s anxious enough without feeling like that so she finds a way to tuck them up underneath her again and shifts to her side so that she’s leaning up against her pillows against the headboard and that at least _kind of_ works and when she looks up Rose is staring at her like she’s crazy – _she’s not crazy_ – and she wants it to feel so fond and familiar because _it does_ but not in the way she wants and—

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“You’re just moving around a lot, that’s all.” Rose is settled the way she always is, firm and easy, and she has those glasses on her nose that she’s been wearing more and more often recently. They still make her look like a sexy librarian, but Luisa has made sure not to ever say that again for fear that Rose will wear them even less often.

She wants to take a picture. (She knows better than to try and take a picture.)

“Sorry. It’s hard to find the right spot to get comfortable sometimes.” Luisa shifts again, even though she’s finally as comfortable as she thinks she’s going to get just to give Rose a hard time. “You wanted to talk. Let’s talk.”

Rose reaches over and brushes a hand through Luisa’s hair, and Luisa can feel herself melting. Not good. _Not good._ She forces herself to focus as Rose asks, her voice soft, “Why do you want to move?”

She doesn’t want to answer. Truthfully, she really _really_ doesn’t want to answer. It isn’t just that she’s hopelessly in love with Rose – or that she _has_ been since before they moved – not because she could have lived with that, even though that would be enough of a reason on its own, but that….

Well, she’d thought moving in with Rose would mean actually learning more about Rose. Luisa thought – living together – maybe she would learn about Rose’s parents or her family or where she’d come from or why she was pursuing a degree in law, why she wanted to be a lawyer. But the more Luisa told Rose about herself, the more she knew Rose learned about her from being around her mother, the bigger the chasm between their knowledge of each other seemed to grow. Luisa hasn’t learned _anything_ about Rose since they moved in together. Rose is just as shut as she always has been.

But she can’t say _that_ either.

And her mother….

No, no, it isn’t right to fight about that. Luisa knows she can live through that fight. It’ll hurt, definitely, but she can live through that. And it isn’t part of the answer. She knows Rose thinks that. At least, she _thinks_ Rose thinks that. But she doesn’t know enough about the redhead to even make that claim, to even be certain. Even now, she wishes—

“You always lock the bathroom door.”

Luisa feels Rose’s fingers flinch in her hair. She doesn’t know why she said that. It’s true, but it’s not a particularly big enough thing to make her move out. But she goes along with it anyway because it’s something to say that seems like it can ring true in one form or fashion.

“You always lock the bathroom door, and I never lock it, and sometimes you’re getting into the bathroom right when I wake up and I really need to pee and then I have to wait for _hours_ while you’re in there until it feels like I’m going to burst. And _I know_ ,” she sighs, taking a deep breath, “it’s not cool to have someone peeing while you’re in the bathtub or in the shower – especially not when they flush and the water gets _so hot_ and then they wash their hands and the water can get _so cold_ – and you never pee when _I’m_ in the shower, at least not that I’ve noticed, but sometimes I need to brush my teeth, too, before I go off to class, because there’s a girl there I like—”

And she freezes, her eyes widening, and she flushes the slightest bit at her own lie. But she doesn’t let herself be stopped by that.

“—and I don’t want my breath to smell bad if I sit next to her or anything like that. Like I know it’s not really the best idea to get super dressed up for class to try and attract one of the other girls because then I’d be stuck wearing that until I leave campus – and _I know_ we live right here near campus so it isn’t that far but I don’t want to come here in that rush between classes and change all the time _and what if she sees me later and I’ve changed clothes?_ That would be weird.”

Luisa doesn’t look up, doesn’t try to meet Rose’s eyes. She can feel that Rose’s fingers haven’t started working through her hair again, and she thinks it’s probably because she’s said something that interferes with Rose’s privacy. That seems to be what is most important to Rose: privacy. “Maybe I should learn to lock the bathroom door, too, and make you wait.” She lets out the deep breath. “But I don’t. _Won’t._ So I guess we’re at an impasse.”

She looks up, and as she does, Rose’s fingers begin to work through her hair again. It doesn’t make her feel better, though. Instead, she can feel this sickly clenching in the center of her stomach, like she’s doing something wrong and she shouldn’t be.

Rose seems to hesitate, to take a deep breath of her own, before saying, her voice still soft but somehow rough, “Do you know why I lock the door?”

“The same reason anyone does, I guess.” Luisa averts her gaze. “It’s really not that big of a deal. I’m used to it now, I guess.”

“But you’re still moving because of it.”

Luisa bites her lower lip and forces herself to nod. “Yeah.”

“Because you can’t look your best for the girl you like.”

Luisa tugs harder on her lower lip, and she’s afraid she’ll pierce it through. “Yeah.”

Rose nods – she can feel the movement against her back – and then shifts ever so slightly, moving her fingers from Luisa’s hair. Luisa turns to face her, only to see that Rose is pulling her shirt off. Now _she’s_ the one covering her eyes. “Rose, I just said I liked someone else, so if you’re trying for sex now, that’s not the _best_ idea.”

Of course, she hopes that’s the case anyway. She knows it isn’t. But she’s allowed to hope.

Luisa hears the soft thud of something hitting the floor on the other side of the bed. Rose’s shirt, probably, because she can feel the redhead’s skin against the back of her neck. She shivers in spite of herself, shivers even more when Rose’s hand touches the one covering her eyes and slowly moves it.

“Luisa, I need you to look.” Her voice is soft, but not as soft as her fingers are. “Can you open your eyes, please?”

She nods. She forgets to open her eyes. She winces. She opens her eyes, but she doesn’t look up.

That is, perhaps, what Rose expected.

There, hovering just under her gaze, is one of Rose’s arms, bare for the first time since she’s met her. And now she can see why – a thick white line tracing from her wrist all the way up to her elbow. Luisa’s eyes follow it, and as they do, Rose’s hand leaves hers and her other arm is laid next to the first, the same thick white line paralleling it.

“Oh.”

It’s all she can say. She doesn’t know what else _to_ say. Just _oh_.

_Oh._

“My stepmother put me in therapy when I was eight years old,” Rose says, slowly pulling her arms away. “I didn’t know what they wanted from me. I was eight. My father had died the previous year – drinking too much – and I thought maybe I should just tell them what they wanted to hear. I was diagnosed with depression, and they gave me medications that I shouldn’t have been on.”

Luisa doesn’t look up. She doesn’t say anything. She’s still trying to process the information.

“When I was fourteen, I did this.” Rose gestures to her arms. “I left the bathroom door unlocked, and my stepmother came in and saw me. She stared for a few minutes and then shut the door and left me there.” She presses her lips together. “It was my birthday. Halloween. I thought everyone would be out of the house. The last thing I remember is my stepbrother finding me. I think he was the one who called the ambulance to come get me. I guess he saved my life.” She pulls her arms around herself and sighs. “My stepmother never brought it up again. They changed my meds. That summer, my stepmother left me in a mental institute. She never really wanted anything to do with me.”

Luisa still doesn’t say anything. She’s still trying to grapple with what she’s being told.

“I still had schoolwork. I wasn’t bad at it. The people there got used to me. They liked me, I think, or pitied me. I’m not sure it really matters.” Rose takes a breath so deep that Luisa can feel it shifting her, too. “One of the therapists eventually took me off of most of my meds. She was new, and she…. Well, I don’t think it was the best idea for most people, but for me, it worked. She put me on lower doses of a few things, and I applied to college, and when I got there, I flushed the rest of the pills down the drain and quit taking them.” She takes another deep breath. “I felt like I could breathe. And I always locked the bathroom after that.”

“You hate therapists,” Luisa manages to make out, just barely. She looks up – not even really taking in Rose’s bare stomach or the freckles covering the back of her arms or how spattered they are across her shoulders – these are things she will remember later, thinking on things, but not what she notices now – right now, she notices the glasses still resting on the edge of Rose’s nose, the deep blue eyes watching her curiously, the hand moving towards her, the thumb brushing just under her eyes. “You _hate_ therapists.”

“I like you well enough,” Rose says, and when she pulls her thumb back, it’s wet with Luisa’s tears. She hadn’t even realized she was crying.

Luisa shakes her head. “I’m not a therapist yet.”

“You did a good job with your mom – rehabilitation and release.” Rose presses her lips together, still watching Luisa, and meets her eyes. “She’s doing really well. I think that’s the best mark of a therapist – helping someone learn how to live their lives without your help. Isn’t that what your mom is doing now?”

She hadn’t wanted to bring it up. She still doesn’t. It’s not—

“ _You hate therapists, and you broke into a mental institution with me to get my mom’s records._ ” Luisa bites her lower lip again, trying to make sense of all of this. “You helped me help her. Doesn’t that make _you_ a therapist?”

Rose shrugs. “It makes me an assistant, if that, and only if you count yourself a therapist.”

“I don’t count myself a therapist.”

“Then you can’t count me one either.” Rose slowly brushes her fingers through Luisa’s hair again, and Luisa doesn’t want to melt – it’s _harder_ now, because she’s actually actively _trying_ to hold onto the swirling mix of what she doesn’t even have a name for but kind of feels like when you try to drink soda after eating a red hot and your mouth _burns_ but not like a real pepper would make it burn but kind of like sticking your finger on a steering wheel after it has been in the hot sun all day and even its plastic covering has gotten hot enough to sting when you touch it. Rose moves her fingers through Luisa’s hair like drinking milk after a habanero, like ice on her fingers after a burn, and the sting is still there but it’s cooled. “I just did what I wish someone would have done for me.” Her eyes narrow, a slight thing, thinking. “It isn’t the _not caring_ and _negligence_ that hurts so much as the doing everything to care and somehow still hurting people anyway by not picking up on something important. Like a child lying. Like maybe I would have been fine if they had left well enough alone.”

“My mom wouldn’t have been fine,” Luisa murmurs. “My mom _won’t_ be fine if I’m missing something, if _I’m_ not picking up on something important. My mom _wasn’t_ fine because they _weren’t_ picking up on something not important.” She can’t keep herself from saying it. “Not every situation is going to be bad just because yours was.”

“Your mom’s was, Lu.”

“ _Not everyone is going to be just fine living on their own just because you are, Rose._ ”

“Your mom _is_ , Lu.” Her hand continues to move through Luisa’s hair. “She is doing _fine_. Because you did the thing therapists are supposed to do and _helped her_.”

“ _You don’t know that._ ” Luisa sits up all of a sudden, forcing Rose’s hand back. She wants to be mad – she _is_ mad – but she has to avert her eyes so that she doesn’t stare at Rose’s bare skin, and in averting her eyes, they are drawn back to the scar stitched into Rose’s right arms, and she can’t look at that because she can’t, _she can’t_ —

“At some point, you have to trust your patients to use what you’ve taught them and be able to live their lives without you.” Rose reaches over, grips Luisa’s chin, and lifts her face so that she can’t look anywhere but at Rose. “You have to trust your mom to know what is best for her.”

Luisa looks into Rose’s eyes and she _wants_ to fall into those blue depths _but she doesn’t_ , she pulls her head out of her gentle fingers, and she grits her teeth together, and she says, “I can’t trust my mom to know what is best for herself when she tried to jump off of a bridge, Rose!”

“Then you can’t trust _me_ to know what is best for _me_ when I did _this_.” Rose holds her arms out, forces them in Luisa’s gaze, and leaves them there. But there is no anger to her voice. No venom. No hate. Just what Luisa guesses is a deep, somber sadness.

She didn’t want to talk about this. She still _doesn’t_ want to talk about this. But it’s here, and she’s here, and she can’t _not_ talk about this because she won’t throw Rose out of her room, she can’t just turn away from Rose finally being open and vulnerable about herself and—

_Just to win a fight._

No. Not to win a fight. _She_ had turned it into a fight, hadn’t she?

Who had brought up her mother first?

Does it matter?

“My mom could seem like she’s fine and she might try to jump off a bridge again and this time there won’t be anyone there to stop her,” Luisa says finally, looking up and just past Rose so that she can stare at the wall behind her. That doesn’t help – there’s a picture of her, and her father, and her mom all together just there, when they were happy, when she _thought_ they were happy but they weren’t, and she closes her eyes because she can’t look at anything anymore because it’s too much. “You and my mom aren’t the same thing. What works for you isn’t going to work for everyone. And I’m so scared that I screwed up and that my mom will _die_ and it will be my fault for letting her out in the first place.”

Luisa takes a deep shuddering breath. “Maybe I should have left her there,” she hears herself say, and she doesn’t know why she says it, hates herself for saying it. “Maybe she should have stayed in there where she was safe.”

Rose tenses. She can feel Rose tense even with her eyes closed. She wants her to attack her for saying such a thing. It’s what she would do.

But Rose doesn’t.

“You don’t really want that, do you?” Rose asks, and Luisa flinches as Rose’s thumb brushes under her eyes again. She’s still crying. She doesn’t think she ever really stopped. “You don’t really want your mother stuck somewhere in that fog, unable to speak, unable to even sign, just sitting and staring out the window and not being able to think straight? Not knowing who she is? Who _you_ are?”

“I don’t know what I want,” Luisa says. It’s maybe the truest thing she has ever said. She leans forward against Rose, her eyes still closed, and takes a deep breath. “You wanted to talk about why I’m moving out. Maybe this is why. Maybe the bathroom door should have stayed locked shut.”

“Maybe it still is.”

Luisa opens her eyes and looks up and Rose isn’t looking at her but is looking at something far distant.

“Let’s talk about something else,” Rose says, and her voice is soft, and she wraps one hand around Luisa and holds her against herself, and she brushes one hand comfortingly through Luisa’s hair. “Let’s talk about this girl in your class that you like. What’s she look like?”

Luisa looks away. “She’s got red hair,” she says, forces herself to say it, her voice barely above a whisper. “And freckles. And these bright blue eyes that always get dark whenever she’s excited about something. And she doesn’t talk much, but I know she thinks a lot because whenever she _does_ say something, it’s always important and to the point and something I have to think about later. I _always_ think about what she says later.” Her lips curve into a smile. “I think she hates Christmas, because whenever she sees any decorations, she gets this scowl on her face and she rolls her eyes. I thought about getting her a present, just to introduce myself, but I think…I think she wouldn’t appreciate that.”

Rose’s fingers continue to brush through her hair. “I think she would like a present,” she says, her voice careful. “Everyone likes presents, even if they are an obligation pushed onto us due to corporations wanting us to spend a lot of money all at once at a time of year that seems best to them.”

“No,’ Luisa says. “I don’t think so. She doesn’t seem like the sort who would appreciate that. But maybe next year.”

“Are you going to see her next year?” Rose asks, her voice light. “You won’t be in that same class anymore, so it’s just chance on campus. Are you willing to take that risk?”

Luisa presses her lips together. “I don’t know,” she says, finally. “I don’t know. I can’t control what classes she’s taking.” She curls closer to Rose. “Maybe I messed up, not getting her anything. I don’t think she’ll remember me at all.”

“I’m sure she will,” Rose says, rubbing one hand along Luisa’s back. “You would be impossible to forget.”

Luisa nods against her chest. “Stay with me?” she asks, refusing to look up, refusing to see what Rose’s expression is because she’s certain that no matter what it is, it will hurt. “Just until the morning. Please. I don’t want to be alone.”

“Always.” Rose moves just enough to press a kiss to Luisa’s forehead, and she hates it, and she wants her to do it again, and she hates that she wants her to do it again because they aren’t—they _haven’t been_ —

 _This_ is why she has to move. Why she can’t stay here.

Because she is so tired of being confused.


	4. Chapter 4

_Mom, I met a girl._

Luisa stands outside her mom’s new house, her hand frozen in the act of knocking before she even does. Her entire body feels cold. That’s the problem with December; it’s cold outside, and no matter what Luisa does, she always feels cold. Except when she’s with Rose, and then she’s warm all over, and when she isn’t, Rose keeps her warm. The sidewalk and the steps are all shoveled, though there isn’t much snow yet. It’s the ice to be worried about – the places in the street where the snow melts and freezes and melts and refreezes until the ice is so thick and slippery that barely one touch and you’re spinning on the ground. But she has been keeping track of her mother’s sidewalk – she’s here more days than she should be, to make sure that everything is safe for her, but whoever has been cleaning the pathways for her gets here earlier than even Luisa does. (Not that it’s hard, although today it might be.) The flowers she’d planted in the flower boxes are all gone and covered in snow, but the soft blue of the planters still peeks through.

Her mother had asked for roses, but she hadn’t planted any. She’d complained about the thorns, about the weather, saying it was too late in the year to try and plant rose pushes, but it hadn’t been about any of that. It was never about any of that.

Luisa takes a deep breath and knocks on the door twice.

It isn’t long before her mom opens the door – it’s never too long, and she thinks it’s because her mom knows what she might think if things take too long – _maybe there is a reason that parents cannot be their children’s surgeon_ – and thinking about that just makes Luisa feel colder, like she shouldn’t even be worried in the first place. She isn’t sure she _can’t_ be worried. The therapist in her tells her that she’s dealing with her own childhood trauma, and she guesses maybe that’s true. Maybe _she_ is the one who should be seeing a therapist.

“Are you ready?” Luisa asks, trying to let her eyes be bright, trying to appear _excited_ and not the slightest bit apprehensive, even though she knows that her signing makes it blatant.

 _Almost._ Mia gestures for her daughter to come inside, and Luisa does without a second thought. The house feels so much more _warm_ than her room at their house had been, which, even as bare as it had been, had still felt leaps and bounds better than her room at Belle Reve. The walls are still a barren white because this isn’t her house to own, but their white expanse is covered with thin, gauzelike fabric of different colors – mostly a soft orange or greenish-blue. Pinned to the fabric are a handful of cut-out fish interspersed with pictures – mostly of their family, when Luisa was younger, but there are a few that are newer.

One in particular draws Luisa’s attention, and she steps toward it, fingers brushing its edges. “When did you break into my phone for this?”

It’s the picture of Rose she’d shown her all those months ago – it feels like a year, even though it isn’t quite, not yet – the picture of Rose that makes her seem almost angelic. Her favorite, if she had a favorite, but it’s still the same as it was even then – every picture of Rose is her favorite just because it’s a picture of _Rose_. Her heart aches.

Mia stops and smiles at her. “What, I can’t want something _pretty_ to hang on my wall?” Her voice is almost the same as Luisa remembers it being when she was small, her accent lighter than it was then but finally _back_. It isn’t raspy anymore, isn’t raw, just quiet sometimes, as though she has forgotten how to speak.

“Don’t tell me you told her that,” Luisa says, her eyes widening as she finally turns from the picture to face her mom. “You weren’t supposed to tell her that.”

“You learn a lot of things when no one thinks you’re listening,” Mia muses, her smile softening. “No, I didn’t tell her.”

 _Thank you_ , Luisa signs, the tips of her fingers dropping from her chin as the back of her hand hits her other palm. _Are you ready to go now?_

 _I wanted to give you this first._ Mia holds out a small box, wrapped in green and red stripes with a thin glittering gold stripe every now and again between the lighter and darker green stripes. There is an emerald green ribbon tying the entire thing together, with the same gold on its edges as the stripes, and the edge of the box’s lid is a deep, deep red.

Luisa’s eyes widen again. _It isn’t Christmas yet. I’m not supposed to be opening that until tomorrow, after everyone wakes up._

Mia shrugs once, placing the box on the table next to her soft woven sofa. _Sue an old woman for trying to give her daughter something in secret._ She winks at her. _You’ll get another one with your father and brother tomorrow. This one_ , she continues, pushing the box a little closer, _is just for you._ She glances up with a smile. _And I have one for you to take Rose, too. It’s a shame she won’t be joining us._

 _I asked her_ , Luisa lies, _but she didn’t want to come. There’s not anything I can do about that._

Her mother’s fingers continue to move as Luisa reaches over to pick up the box, her fingers tracing the edge of the ribbon. _I know. I asked her, too, the last time she was here._

Luisa almost drops the box. She hadn’t known that Rose had been continuing to visit her mom. It shouldn’t surprise her, but it does. She wonders if Rose mentioned that she hadn’t asked her at all. That doesn’t sound like the Rose she knows, but….

There’s a lot about Rose she still doesn’t know.

 _What’s in this?_ Luisa signs.

_You have to open it and find out._

Luisa has never been one to open Christmas presents early. It’s not a thing she does – Christmas presents are for Christmas, and other presents are for other things. The point of the present is to open it in the presence of your family, not just to see what you are being given but also to see the joy of those around you – to share in the joy you have for what they’ve given you. You’re happy for the gift, and they’re happy to see _you_ happy – and it’s more than that.

But if her mom wants her to open this one here and now, then who is she to deny her that? Maybe it’s something she doesn’t want the rest of her family to see, something special just for her.

Well, of course it is. Obviously. She’s thinking too much about this.

At her mom’s prompting, Luisa unties the ribbon and slowly opens the box. Inside is a key. Luisa’s eyes narrow as she picks it up, holding it out in front of her. _What is this?_

She can almost hear Rose’s voice saying, _It’s a key, Luisa. What do you think it is?_ and thinking it brings a fond smile to her face.

 _Rose said that you were moving out, and I thought it was time to give you that._ Mia smiles and taps the box. _I thought you could use a place to get away and do some thinking. There’s an inn a few miles from here – a bed and breakfast – that went under a long time ago. Your father and I were supposed to open it together—_

Mia stops, then, and her eyes grow wistful. She shakes her head, takes a deep breath to steady herself, and then continues. _He hasn’t done anything with it. I drove up there with him last week_ —

Luisa checks out for a few minutes. Her parents have been spending time together! Without her! That sounds like such a small thing to be excited about, and yet she can’t help but be excited. She’d thought her father was still avoiding her mom. She’s so happy to be proven wrong. _For once._

She checks back in to see that Mia has finished signing and is smiling at her expectantly. Luisa presses her lips together in a little wince. _Sorry. I missed the last part of that. What did you say?_

Mia sighs and takes Luisa’s hands in her own. “I said,” she says, her voice soft but insistent, “it would be a perfect place for you to set up your clinic.”

 _My clinic?_ Luisa signs. She hasn’t mentioned anything about that. Besides, she isn’t far enough along in her schooling to be able to do anything like that. Sure, she’s graduating at the end of this school year, but an actual _clinic_? _I’m not ready for that!_

 _I just thought, since you did such a good job helping me, that having a building of your own to do whatever you want with it, when you’re able to, would be a great…would be good._ Mia doesn’t stop, moving straight on in a sense not quite like Luisa’s rambling, but perhaps more thought out. _It isn’t like your father and I will be building a home there any time soon. You might have more use for it._ She reaches over and closes Luisa’s hand over the key. _Just think about it._

Luisa nods, staring at the key clasped in her closed hand. She doesn’t know what to say – which, in her opinion, is just about the worst thing when it comes to getting a present – not knowing what to say, not saying anything. So she forces a smile on her face, meets her mom’s eyes, and nods. _Thank you._

But she’s not sure yet whether she’s actually thankful about it at all.

 _If all else fails_ , her mom continues to sign, _it’s a good place to hide when you don’t want to be found._

And suddenly, she is quite a bit more thankful.

* * *

Rose is up before the crack of dawn on Christmas morning.

Of note – she _hates_ herself for this, but it is the case regardless.

Luisa isn’t at their house; she’d spent the night at her father’s place, choosing to spend Christmas morning and everything involved with that with her family. As she should – Rose doesn’t hold that against her in the slightest. Of course she should be spending what appears to be her favorite holiday with people who would celebrate it with her instead of with her perpetual Scrooge.

And yet.

Rose doesn’t know exactly when Luisa will be returning, and she has a lot to do before the other woman returns. She doesn’t need to be up _this_ early, but once she is awake, she has a hard time getting back to sleep. Besides, Rose has a hard time staying asleep anyway; the slightest sounds can wake her up. Getting up this early is new, but she can just chalk that up to the inner acknowledgement of all of the children waking up this earlier or earlier, stampeding down stairs or around corridors, yelling at their parents, and sitting in their living rooms or near their fireplaces and eagerly awaiting opening their presents – the ones from their parents, the ones from their siblings, and especially the ones from Santa.

Who, of note, does not exist. He’s just a lie told to perpetuate....

Oh, she is too _tired_ for this.

She struggles out of her bed, bare feet landing on the cold floor, and immediately shivers. Sleeping with Luisa has many perks, one of them being that she can stay warm with her for a few moments so that when she greets the day she doesn’t feel like this, but that’s not the important thing.

Instead of her normal yawn, Rose coughs a couple of times, covering her mouth with one arm, and then reaches beneath her bed, pulling out the packages she’d gotten so many weeks ago. Some of these she’ll wrap while she cooks, others will be stuffed into the stocking that Luisa _demanded_ they hang (she also demanded they hang one for Rose, too, but she knows better than to think there will be anything in that – Luisa hasn’t been here to fill it for her), and one, not a present, she’ll make sure to hang somewhere around the house.

She’s already chosen the right spot. She thinks. She’ll rethink that when she goes to hang it.

But first, she needs coffee.

_Lots and lots of coffee._

* * *

_Luisa, I think it’s time for you to get going_ , Mia signs as she nudges her daughter gently. _You said you wanted to be back in time to watch a movie with Rose, didn’t you?_

They’re in the kitchen together, away from her brother and father’s prying eyes. Mia washes the dishes while Luisa slowly dries them, although Mia has paused just long enough to sign to her. Breakfast had been wonderful, and lunch had been wonderful still, and there’s reason to believe that dinner will be even more wonderful. Rafael has invited his girlfriend to join them. She’s supposed to be getting here soon; he’s supposed to be joining her family tomorrow. They seem to take Christmas just as seriously as Luisa herself does, and the girl – who he’s said is named Jane – is supposed to be getting here any minute.

But right now—

 _Don’t mention her around Raf and Dad, okay?_ Luisa signs as she puts the towel to one sign. _I don’t want Raf and “Oooooooo, who is this girl you’re talking about?”_ She groans. _That would absolutely **ruin** Christmas._ She can already imagine his bright eyes and jesting grin, his voice as he asks if _he_ can meet her. As if Rose would ever love someone like him.

_~~As if Rose loves her.~~ _ ~~~~

Luisa shakes her head. _I think I’m going to stay a little longer_ , she signs. _I want to meet Raf’s girlfriend, and Rose won’t mind._ She’s sure about that. Rose won’t mind at all if she’s a little later.

Or if she’s a lot later.

It’s not like Rose particularly _likes_ Christmas. She’ll probably be more than excited to miss the movie. Maybe that will be her Christmas present to her – no more Christmas movies. No more today, and no more ever again.

Yeah – letting Rose go – that would be the best Christmas present, wouldn’t it?

* * *

Mia watches her daughter carefully.

She _seems_ happy. To anyone outwardly watching, that would of course be the way of it.

But she’d lived with them.

She knows better.

Her daughter isn’t happy here.

But hours pass, and she is _here_ when she would be happier elsewhere.

Eventually – _eventually_ – she pulls Luisa to the side.

“ _Take me home, please._ ”

She speaks and signs it together, trying to give it the greatest weight possible, so that she knows her daughter heard it.

“ _I want to go home now._ ”

Luisa looks at her and nods once. “Okay,” she says, her voice soft, and she nods before forcing that same smile on her “If you really want to go, then let’s go. Let’s go home.”

* * *

It’s late when Luisa finally makes it back to her little house. She expects the only light to be the one outside, beckoning her inward, but she notices a light on in the living room, too, and feels a sudden stab of guilt. She’d made her decision hours ago, staying with her family instead of spending time with Rose, and she hadn’t sent Rose any warning, any text, any…any _anything_ to indicate that she wouldn’t be back when she said. Maybe she hadn’t meant to spend _hours_ with her family, but she hadn’t meant to come back. But after leaving to take her mother home, there hadn’t been any point in returning. The party had already been dwindling down. By the time she might get back, it would be over and everyone would be asleep. Well, Raf and his girlfriend might not be, but that’s not the sort of thing Luisa really wants to interrupt.

So she’s here, and the lights are on, and she feels…guilty.

It isn’t a particularly _good_ feeling.

It’s a feeling that only intensifies when Luisa makes her way into the house and finds the dining room table spread with food that has only grown cold in her absence. There is no meat on the table to be seen – the main dish appears to be something of an eggplant parmesan, something Luisa has repeatedly mentioned as one of her favorite dishes but particularly tricky to get to her exact specifications. But there are other things, too, dishes more acceptable for a Christmas dinner – cheesy potatoes and mashed potatoes and tater tots (because they are in college and they are Americans and potatoes are their own special class of food stuffs), green beans (which is more for Rose than it is for Luisa, who finds their texture to be slimy and disgusting, even when they taste alright), a bowl full of macaroni and cheese with baked beans mixed in, a plate with pickles and sweet pickles and at least three different kinds of olives, a salad that seems to be wilting in its bowl – and on the kitchen counter, Luisa can see three different pies and can guess at their contents without even seeing them: one would be a cherry cheesecake (white, vanilla cheesecake with cherry sauce and cherries on top), one would be a chocolate cheesecake (and this would be the bigger of them and would likely go first because they would both be eating on it), and one would be an apple pie (Luisa’s preference, when it came to pies, and which Rose always said made her think about her mother – her real mother – even though she never explained why).

Not good. _Not good._

It’s a feeling that increases _even more_ to the point of gnawing at her stomach lining when Luisa makes her way into the living room, where the lights are still on. There are presents – _a lot_ of presents – under their tree, when there had been none before, and the stockings that Luisa had made Rose hang…. Well, they aren’t _both_ full, there’s no way Rose would fill her stocking with presents for herself – which makes Luisa feel _worse_ , because that means all of the presents currently crowded under the tree are for _her_ – but _Luisa’s_ stocking, the light blue one with the bright pink fringe and the mermaid and the scales – because, look, just because it’s Christmas doesn’t mean she can’t have a mermaid stocking, the point is that it’s a _stocking_ , and if they need a traditional one, then _Rose_ has a traditional one, so they’re still okay – _her stocking is overflowing_. There’s even a little stuffed dog at the very top, its legs hanging out of the brim and its head poking through – a Great Pyrenees, maybe, with a fluffy yellowish-white coat and light blue ears.

And Rose—

There, curled up on the sofa, is Rose, her head resting against one of the pillows, her glasses still on, breathing lightly. Her red hair, which is usually pulled up in a ponytail, is down and curled and _wow, she is really attractive, she’s really really cute like this,_ and Luisa’s heart _aches_. And of course, _of course_ , she’s in that robe Luisa had gotten her those few months ago, with the black lace and the black fur fringe, and it looks almost like Rose had gotten everything done and then sat down to rest for a few minutes after her bath and just _passed out_ from sheer exhaustion.

And Luisa hadn’t even shown up.

Luisa steps slowly, carefully over to Rose. She pauses by the stockings and rifles around in her pockets until she finds the key her mom had given her the day before. She bites her lower lip, gives it a little kiss, and then stuffs it into Rose’s stocking. Then she moves to Rose, taking one of the blankets from the foot of the sofa, and starts to tuck it in around her, trying to be careful not to wake her. She pauses once she’s done and then carefully, ever so carefully, reaches out to brush a stray strand of Rose’s hair out of her face—

Rose’s eyes snap open, and she sits up all at once, blinking. She groans and tries to rub a hand across her eyes, only for it to hit her glasses, and then she shakes her head, pulls off her glasses, places them to the side, and rubs her hand across her eyes again. “Luisa,” she murmurs, her voice groggy. “When did you get here? How long have I been out?” Before Luisa can even say anything, she glances out the window, sees that it’s grown quite dark outside, and lets out another, longer groan, closing her eyes and head tilted up toward the ceiling. “ _I should have been up hours ago._ You were supposed to wake me up!” She props her hands on the sofa cushion and pushes herself into a sitting position. “Tell me you at least ate something. I tasted everything, and it should be good.” She presses her lips together. “I didn’t taste everything. You know salad tastes _horrible_ without dressing. But everything I cooked, I tasted. It’s all good.”

“I just got back,” Luisa whispers, because she can’t – she _won’t_ – lie to Rose about this. She fiddles with her fingers, itching to sign the way she does when she is with her mother, the way she has all day, but she doesn’t. “I stayed and ate dinner with my family. Rafael brought his girlfriend, and I wanted to meet her. I didn’t think you would mind.” Her gaze drops. “I thought you didn’t like Christmas.”

“I don’t.” Rose reaches up and taps Luisa’s nose. “But _you_ do. I thought, our last Christmas together, I should make it something special.” She leans forward.

Luisa can feel her heart stop. It’s Christmas. Rose did _all of this_. That means something! That definitely means something! Actual concrete proof of something that means… _something_!

But Rose just brushes a hand along her shoulder, pushing her hair back. She looks up, almost smiling. “I did some decorating while you were gone.”

“Decorating?” Luisa’s gaze moves away from Rose, her cheeks a bright flush as her hopes fall, and move towards the presents, the stockings. “I don’t think that’s just _decorating_ , Rose. Unless those are fake presents. Unless those are just pretty boxes. I will completely understand if those are just boxes because _those are a lot of presents_ and of course they’re just boxes because you wouldn’t actually _spend that much money_ on all of that because it’s Christmas and corporate media bullshit and if you were going to give me presents it wouldn’t all be on the one day a year that it was expected of you and I guess it’s night now but you know what I mean—”

“They’re real,” Rose says, and she takes Luisa’s hand in her own, rubbing her thumb along her skin.

 _Luisa hates this._ She can feel her heartrate speeding up, when she _knows_ better. _She knows better._

Rose stands and takes her halfway between the living room and the dining room and then stops just there. “See anything different?” she asks.

“A lot of things.” Luisa takes her hand out of Rose’s and nervously brushes her hair back behind one ear. “The food. There’s a lot of food. And the stocking with the dog at the top and it’s full of stuff. And the presents. And the….” She searches around, not seeing anything else. “I’m not missing anything, am I?”

“Look up.”

_Up?_

Luisa isn’t sure what she’s looking for when she glances toward the ceiling, but it becomes blatantly apparent as soon as she sees the mistletoe hanging above her. Her eyes widen. “Mistletoe?” She glances back to Rose. “You don’t even _like_ me! And you had _so many other opportunities_ to kiss me, so you _can’t_ want to do that. _Unless…?_ ”

“I got tired of waiting.” Rose moves forward then, crossing the distance between them, and captures Luisa’s lips with her own.

It’s a small thing at first. Luisa has never felt so unsure of herself in one of these moments – she blames it on 1) not having anything to drink and 2) waiting for this for so long and being so certain that it wouldn’t happen that she isn’t even sure it’s actually happening right now. But instinct kicks in, and her arm wraps around Rose’s neck, pulling her closer so that she can deepen the kiss. Her lips part against Rose’s soft ones, tongue brushing across her lower lip before seeking hers out.

When they finally part again, Rose brushes one hand through Luisa’s hair, smoothing it back out, and smiles, her face flushed. “Merry Christmas.”

Luisa frowns. “You don’t even _like_ Christmas.”

“But I like _you_ ,” Rose says before kissing her again, brushing their noses together. “I think that more than makes up for it.”


	5. Epilogue

Snow falls lightly over Longbourne Inn.

The sign still hangs in front, weather-beaten from the years of disuse, so that the cherry wood is frayed and the blue and white paint is cracked – so much so that the lettering can no longer be read. A small cobblestone pathway has been swept clean of snow, but the new flakes leave small white segments over the stones. The building itself looks rickety, showing its age in the aged wood, the light purple shingles – like one of those buildings in the tiny Christmas villages that collectors buy up, down to the evergreen pines on either side of the porch, the shrubs and rose bushes surrounding the front, _the fact that there even is such a sweeping, huge porch_. Someone has been here recently; the trees and shrubs are covered with long lines of twinkling lights, even though the Christmas season has come and gone. A couple of lights illuminate the windows, but their panes are covered with curtains, so we can’t see inside.

But although the inside may be of interest to us, our focus goes higher, to the top of the roof of this third story building, where two young women lay under the stars, staring up at them. One of them curls closer to the other one, shivering. “Rose, it’s _cold_. And snowing! Can we go inside now?”

Rose checks her phone, swipes through it a few times, and then flips it back over. “Not yet. We’ve still got a few more minutes.”

“A few more minutes until _what_?”

It has been a long couple of years since the winter when they first met, a long year since that first kiss under the mistletoe. Luisa’s degree is finished, but she’s taking the year off before starting her internship. The weight of looking after her mother – the pressure of making sure she will be okay – has taken more of a toll on her than she imagined. She hadn’t wanted to jump into the fray so soon after that. This is mentally healthier for her. Rose’s internships at her law firm have finished as well, and when they offered her a more permanent position there, she’d quickly swiped it up. It’s been a little better than the internship was – it definitely pays better – but she’s taken this week off to get away with Luisa.

This isn’t the first time they’ve been to the inn that Luisa’s mother gifted her and she subsequently gifted Rose, who had been surprised to find a key in her stocking when she’d expected it to be completely empty, even more surprised that Luisa had given her a piece of property that she had never personally seen.

( _“That isn’t a good idea, Luisa. What if you really want this? What if_ I **don’t** _want this?”_

_Luisa stares at her, blinking. “Mom wouldn’t give me a building that isn’t completely sound. It’ll be fine.”_

_Rose’s eyes narrow. “You’re giving me your gift?”_

_“I figured she wouldn’t mind. She likes you, too, after all. And now…we’d be sharing it together, right?”_

_“You didn’t know that!”_ )

Although it isn’t the first time they’ve been here, they haven’t officially moved in yet. Luisa has spent more time coming up here throughout the week than Rose has, and they’ve spent multiple weekends getting to know the community – and fixing the place up. Luisa had been right that the building was sound, but it is still _old_ and needs a lot of updates and changes for what they plan to do with the place. Once everything is ready – and once Luisa is finished with her internships and has spent more time in actual on the floor work – they plan to turn what was once Longbourne Inn into a long-term inpatient facility. Luisa will take care of the day-to-day mental health of their residents; Rose will deal with the legal issues; and they plan to hopefully hire a select team of people to help out with everything else because they can’t do everything on their own. It’s a lot of money and a lot of work, but with the wealth Luisa’s father has and their determination, they’re certain that it will happen.

Eventually.

But that’s a future concern – and this is now – the two of them lying under the stars, Luisa curled up against Rose, a blanket beneath them and both staring up at the sky.

“We can’t stay up here very long,” Luisa says, her gaze moving to the edge of the roof. “You know how Lex gets if we leave her alone for too long.”

Rose sighs. “I told you, she’ll be fine. She’s a good dog. You’ve trained her well.”

Luisa frowns. “I’m not worried about that. I just don’t want her to get sad and miss us.” She leans up and presses a quick kiss to Rose’s cheek. “She’ll want to celebrate the New Year with us, too, you know. Just because she’s a dog—”

“We’ll be down there soon enough. Just wait.”

In the innkeeper’s suite on the bottom floor, a brown border collie lies curled up in a dog bed, head resting on her front paws. She gives a slight huff, and her blue eyes close. As much as Luisa is worried about her, Lex is exhausted and is doing _just fine_ on her own for a few minutes.

“What am I waiting for?”

“ _You’ll see._ ” Rose chuckles, the low sign rumbling under Luisa’s head where it rests on her chest. “You’re so impatient.”

Luisa leans up, her lips pursed into a scowl. “I will have you know that I am _very_ patient. I waited almost an entire year for you to ask me out!”

“That’s not the same thing.”

“It totally is!” Luisa sticks her tongue out at her.

“ _Whatever._ ”

Luisa leans forward just enough to press a quick, chaste kiss to Rose’s lips before curling up against her chest again. “It’s a good thing you’re cute.”

Rose’s brows raise. “Excuse you. I’m the _hot_ one. _You_ are the cute one.”

“Pretty sure I’m both.” Luisa grins. “And you’re the _pretty_ one.”

Rose rolls her eyes. Before she can say anything, an alarm on her phone goes off, and she quickly reaches over to stop it. “We’ve got a minute,” she says, staring up at the sky. “You ready?”

Luisa shivers again and curls closer to Rose. “I have been ready for the last half hour. It is _cold_ and it is _snowing_ and—”

“—and you are _fine_.” Rose brushes a hand soothingly through Luisa’s hair. “Quit being such a baby.”

“I will have you remember that my being a baby is how we first met, thank you very much.” Luisa wraps her hand tighter around Rose’s waist. “Is it time now?”

Rose flips her phone over so that she can watch the timer countdown. “Ten seconds. Five. Four. Three. Two. One.”

As soon as the last second slips from her lips, there’s a loud booming sound followed by a shower of colored sparks overhead. Luisa jumps in Rose’s arms – she’d been moving to give her the New Year’s kiss, as is proper – and the loud sound shocks her. She glances up and grins. “Fireworks.”

“ _Fireworks._ ” Rose meets Luisa halfway and completes the kiss for her before pulling back and staring up at the sky, pointing at the celebration happening overhead, the colors interspersed with the stars, interspersed with light cloud cover, interspersed with snow.

Luisa lets out a deep breath, watching as the little cloud her breath makes intermingles with what is happening above them before disappearing entirely. “It’s beautiful.”

“ _You’re_ beautiful.”

Luisa looks back at Rose. “ _You’re_ cheesy.”

Rose gives her another kiss, grinning against her lips. “Happy New Year, Luisa.”

“Happy New Year, Rose.”

Another boom is this time followed by loud barking from downstairs, and Rose heaves a huge sigh. “Sometimes I regret letting you get that dog.”

“You _love_ that dog.” Luisa slowly moves off of Rose and stretches until she feels her lower back pop. She smiles up at her. “Besides, that dog is absolutely integral to my future therapy goals, so you can’t get rid of her and I definitely needed to start training her up as soon as possible and—” She is interrupted by another round of barking and offers Rose a bashful grin. “Don’t hate the dog, hate the dog owner.”

“I will never be able to hate either of you, and you know it.” Rose rolls up the blanket and gives Luisa another quick kiss. “We should still be able to see the display from the window. I just wanted—”

“—on the roof, I know.” Luisa starts to the edge of the roof. There’s a lower part of the roof just below her, easily accessible both from their current landing and from one of the windows on the top floor. “We’re not going to be able to do this as often once we have residents. Someone will be living in that room.”

Rose follows her shortly afterward. “ _We_ should be living in that room. We shouldn’t be allowing anyone else roof access, and the suite on the first floor is going to be much better for any residents you have who might have trouble with stairs.”

“What if _I_ have trouble with stairs?”

Rose gives Luisa a little shove as they make their way back into the top room. “Don’t give me that. You can’t run a place like this if you’re going to have trouble with stairs.”

“I thought that was what you were for.”

Rose catches Luisa before she makes her way downstairs, wraps one of her arms around her, and pulls her close, giving her another kiss. “ _This_ is what I’m here for,” she says, grinning as Luisa’s eyes grow dark. “Not the stairs.”

“Even if I ask nicely?”

Rose stares at her. “ _Maybe_ if you ask nicely.”

They make their way downstairs to meet with their dog, and for the first time in a long time, they let themselves relax. Rose makes hot chocolate over the stove while Luisa calms their dog. The fireworks don’t last near as long as Rose hoped, but once they are done, the three of them curl up on the sofa, huddled up under blankets, and start an old Christmas movie – _Miracle on 34th Street_ – to play softly in the background as the first of many they will see in the new year.


End file.
